Specialist door maker McTavish Ramsey, one of Dundee's oldest manufacturing firms, has gone into receivership with the loss of nearly three-quarters of its workforce, The Scotsman reported. Joint receivers Blair Nimmo and Neil Armour were called in after the firm failed to trade its way out of a Company Voluntary Agreement (CVA) set up at the beginning of March. It had been hoped that the 146-year-old business, which suffered poor trading through the winter, would stabilise its finances under the reduced debt repayment arrangements of the CVA.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. pressed its case Thursday that former executives of the firm were conflicted as they worked on closing a deal to sell its assets to Barclays Plc in 2008, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Lehman, which is fighting to recover billions of dollars from Barclays, has claimed top executives working on the sale had conflicted loyalties because they were negotiating new employment contracts with Barclays when they were supposed to be acting on Lehman's behalf.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. continued its court battle Monday to claw back billions of dollars in assets from Barclays Plc, as two witnesses testified that the British bank wasn't supposed to see an immediate gain when it bought Lehman's core U.S. operation in 2008, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. A member of Lehman's board of directors and its former president testified that the deal hammered out following Lehman's historic bankruptcy filing called for Barclays to acquire a pool of assets and an equivalent amount of liabilities when it bought Lehman's broker-dealer unit.

A steep rise this year in the number of businesses at risk of going bust has fuelled fears that Britain faces a tougher year than expected with more insolvencies and higher unemployment than predicted by the government, The Guardian reported. The number of companies experiencing significant or critical financial distress rose by 14% in the first three months of the year to top 160,000, according to insolvency experts Begbies Traynor.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. continued its court battle Monday to claw back billions of dollars in assets from Barclays Plc, as two witnesses testified that the British bank wasn't supposed to see an immediate gain when it bought Lehman's core U.S. operation in 2008, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. A member of Lehman's board of directors and its former president testified that the deal hammered out following Lehman's historic bankruptcy filing called for Barclays to acquire a pool of assets and an equivalent amount of liabilities when it bought Lehman's broker-dealer unit.

The banking sector strongly criticised International Monetary Fund proposals to impose new taxes on the industry, claiming yesterday that they would hit profits hard, would not reduce the risk of future failures and were at odds with other plans to clean up the industry, the Financial Times reported. The IMF suggested a three-pronged assault on banks and other financial groups that would include a flat tax on the liabilities on their balance sheets and levies on profits and pay.

Hector Sants, the chief of Britain’s financial regulator, pledged last year to reverse his agency’s reputation as a toothless tiger. He wanted to spread fear across the financial services industry by stepping up the aggressiveness of its inquiries and by pursuing more prominent fraud cases. His opportunity has arrived, and its name is Goldman Sachs, The New York Times reported. The Goldman investigation comes at a pivotal time for the British regulator. The F.S.A.’s reputation, like its American counterpart’s, was damaged badly by the financial crisis.

Real estate company Hansteen Holdings has agreed to buy 61 properties from a trio of distressed investors for around 80 million pounds ($124 million) as the frequency of firesales in Britain's indebted property market picks up, Reuters reported. The multi-sector portfolio was bought from receivers acting for various subsidiaries of collapsed property firms Kilmartin Holdings Limited and Kilmartin Group Limited and administrators of Annfield Assets Limited. Some 42 of the 61 properties are in Scotland, 18 in England and one property is in Northern Ireland.

Canwest Global Communications Corp.’s insolvent newspaper division won an extension of bankruptcy protection until June 30 to let it complete an auction for the publications, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. Ontario Superior Court Judge Sarah Pepall granted the extension today following a hearing in Toronto. The bankruptcy protection, first granted Jan. 8, was due to expire April 14. Canwest Global agreed to sell Canwest Ltd.

Top Russian oil producer OAO Rosneft said a U.K. court lifted an order freezing GBP425 million ($648 million) of its assets, the latest twist in a legal battle with an affiliate of bankrupt Russian oil giant Yukos, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The freeze had been obtained last month by Netherlands-based Yukos Capital S.a.r.l., which is seeking to recover a $389 million debt Rosneft assumed when it acquired Yukos assets in 2004. Rosneft had refused to comply with an arbitration award by a Dutch court ordering it to repay the sum, plus interest and penalties.